Fever Feeling
by Ankh-Ascendant
Summary: Right after Harry almost kills Draco with Sectumsempra, Blaise pays him a visit in the hospital wing and proceeds to get what he wants from him. Companion to Duco Draconis.


_TITLE: Fever Feeling  
CHAPTER: oneshot  
AUTHOR: Ankh Ascendant ( setosgirl0 / neferseti0 )  
DATE: 10-21-10  
FANDOM: Harry Potter  
DISCLAIMER: I don't own Harry Potter, or make any money from it.  
PAIRINGS: Blaise/Draco  
TYPE: Romance? For a very loose definition of the term?  
RATING: T (R)  
WARNINGS: weird underage gay almost-sex  
OCs: none  
BETA: none  
WORDS: 2190  
SUMMARY: Right after Harry almost kills Draco with Sectumsempra, Blaise pays him a visit in the hospital wing and proceeds to get what he wants from him.  
NOTES: I started this with the idea of the theme (.com/archives/77) "Touch me not", but instead it morphed into "Flushed cheeks". All those emotions, dontcha know. Also, this is a stand-alone companion to Duco Draconis (.?no=600024469)._

_Fever Feeling_

Blaise almost never had a reason to visit the hospital wing. He didn't make a habit of catching people's diseases, or of getting in brawls, or of making such a fool of himself that he was injured. He also didn't make a habit of being friendly enough to visit someone who did one of those things and wound up there.

There could be an occasional exception, though. Once in second year he had caught a moderately serious cold, and in fourth year he and Theo Nott had had a long-lived, if somewhat petty, feud (since resolved) that had put them both in Madam Pomfrey's clutches once.

And now he was here to pay a visit.

The wing seemed deserted; he glanced around, making sure the witch wasn't going to come fuss at him, then headed for the only bed hidden by curtains. His steps seemed hollow and loud in the quiet. He wondered if the one he intended to visit would be pretending to sleep to ovoid him when he got there.

Without asking permission, he tugged the curtain out of his way and stepped inside the small private space, closing himself in with the blond in the bed. The patient's eyes were closed, but he couldn't tell if he was asleep, or faking it, or just resting.

"Draco," he said, leaning on one of the empty chairs set up out of the way by the bed for visitors without taking a seat, and gave him a few seconds of unobtrusive scrutiny. He didn't look well.

Draco's grey eyes opened and glared at him, flatly and without welcome. If he was surprised to see him he didn't show it; all he showed was impotent hostility. "What are you doing here?" His normally pale cheeks were flushed; symptom of a blood-replenishing potion, Blaise recognized. It made him look feverish.

"I came to mock you on your deathbed, and make sure I would be the first to go through your stuff after you bit it."

Draco glared and started to sit up, but Blaise waved him down as he finally look a seat in the chair. "Relax, Draco. Merlin you're easy. I came to visit."

"That wasn't funny." He grudgingly lay back down, turned to look at him.

"I thought it was." He leaned comfortably back in the chair and folded his hands across his lap to look over him. Draco had been getting progressively more antisocial since the beginning of the school year, but for the first time it crossed his mind that he was actually sick. The feverish flush highlighted an odd grey hue to his face that the green light of their dorm normally hid.

He was staring, and Draco was getting visibly restless and annoyed with it. He thought about continuing to stare just to watch his reaction, but somehow he doubted Draco was in the mood. That antagonizing could wait at least until he was out of the infirmary, he supposed. "Where are the thugs?" he asked to divert attention.

"I told them to get lost." Draco scowled at the second, empty, chair, then rolled onto his back again to stare at the ceiling, one hand absently rubbing his chest.

He could understand that. Actually, it was that chest rubbing that intrigued him more than where their low-browed classmates had gone; it wasn't a gesture he'd seen before.

"And why are you here?"

Draco glanced at him, dropping his hand suddenly, then looked away again without answering.

That was okay. He was patient.

"Potter tried to kill me," he said finally, and rubbed his chest again. Then he glared at him as though daring him to doubt it.

Honestly, he considered it. Having the benefit of experience with Draco's Hippogriff adventure, he was prepared to make his own judgment on just how literally true that was, but ultimately he couldn't doubt that something had happened. He raised his eyebrows in a not-quite-credulous, not-quite-accusatory gesture, waiting for him to explain.

"He did." He scowled at nothing, but he seemed to grow a little paler, too. Interesting. "It was some course I've never seen. There was blood-" He cut himself off, looking a little sick. Very interesting...

He studied Draco's patchy complexion with interest until he recognized that sick paleness for what it was: fear. Draco had honestly feared for his life.

Now _that _was interesting.

Draco didn't let himself show fear for very long, usually - longer than a Malfoy should, but it quickly turned into anger at whoever was causing it. This meant that Blaise didn't often get to see him in fear...

"Was he coming after you?"

Draco looked up at him in pale-faced confusion, trying to decide where he was going with that. "No, I don't know. He was just being a nosy idiot."

So there was more to it. Potter had found him doing something - probably that thing that he kept evading everything from Quidditch to homework to do and refused to tell anyone about - and they had gotten in a fight that got out of hand. Too bad. That wasn't likely to give Draco much fear for very long. He could have gotten used to that.

He'd have to settle for anger or embarrassment like he normally did. He had grown adept at flustering Draco, and at pissing him off, playing that small range of his emotions like an instrument. He never had yet gone so far as to frighten him, and risk driving him away... nor had he made him cry. That was something he might take that risk for, though...

He stood and moved over to the bed; Draco grudgingly shifted aside and gave him room to sit beside him. Without a word he reached up and ran his fingers backward through the blond hair, throwing it into instant disarray.

That always got severely on his nerves. "What the hell?" Draco demanded, sitting up away from him, immediately combing his hair back down into place. He always liked to be so neat and presentable...

Too bad. Blaise reached around his hands, defeated his evasion, and ruffled his hair soundly. "I like it better that way."

"Well, too bad," Draco unconsciously echoed his thoughts, struggling to fix his hair. "What's wrong with you? I almost died."

"Are you planning on dying anytime soon?"

"Of course not."

"Then I don't see what the problem is." He feinted a threatening gesture at Draco's hair again just to watch the pink spots of anger rise in his cheeks. He wouldn't like doing that nearly as much if Draco didn't hate it so much. "You're so easy to rile up."

He flushed a little brighter, with a nice cocktail of irritation and embarrassment and anger fueling his color change. He _was_ easy to manipulate if you knew what you were doing.

"Well, knock it off." Draco shoved his hand away a lot harder than was strictly necessary. "I don't need this right now."

"Oh?" Blaise gave him a faint smile, an indulgent irritating thing that would get right under his skin. So easy. "Why is that?"

Perhaps it was too obvious an attempt to get Draco to accidentally tell him what he had been doing all year, because he gave him a speculative, dark look and reigned in his emotions, his expression closing off in the Malfoy Mask. "None of your business, Zabini. Get out of here."

"Don't do that," he reprimanded calmly, reaching out to cup the pointed chin, letting Draco shove his hand away in irritation. Irritation was better than a mask; more emotion was what he wanted, not less. Draco should know better than to try to put distance between them, or to try and hide those emotions from him. That just wasn't how they did things.

"I'm serious, I can't deal with this right now."

Basking in his visible frustration, he took Draco's chin again, more firmly this time. "Try," he suggested, and leaned forward and kissed him.

Draco made a noise, but it wasn't resistance; he never had been good at resisting. Blaise had a few seconds to enjoy the heat he could feel radiating off him and the bony fingers wrapped in his robes before he broke it off.

Now Draco was pink for yet another reason. It was a good look. As always. Not that he couldn't use some more.

"You're skinny," he observed clinically.

Draco blinked and then threw down his handfuls of material. "Oh, fuck off...!"

He gave his faint smile again, but it was more genuine this time. It was a treat to hear Draco swear - dirty words coming out of his polished persona and aristocratic little accent sent some sort of unidentifiable thrill through him, better than all the flushed cheeks in the world. There was just something about Draco's emotions...

"How about 'fuck you'?" he suggested, and pulled him forward by the neck of his robe.

"Are you insane?" Draco tried to pry his hand off; he wasn't strong enough. They ended up face to face, but he avoided another kiss so he could keep complaining. "We can't do this here!"

"Quit bitching."

Draco gave in to the kiss this time, and he pressed him back down into the bed, sliding a leg over his just in case he decided to have any thoughts about making a getaway. There was a fine line to walk now, between emotional enough to be arousing and so angry he'd call it off or too embarrassed to go on.

The well-worn best path to that was to keep him too horny to say no.

With a carefully measured lack of finesse, he shoved Draco's layered robes out of his way and exposed him to the castle's cool air - he couldn't tell if the shiver was from a sudden chill or his hand sliding up into his crotch, so he decided to assume it was the latter. He liked to think he was still capable of getting that much reaction of out him.

With a squirm that tried to get more of him into his hand, Draco got his arms free and tried to fight his way through Blaise's clothes without letting go of the kissing; he didn't seem to have any reluctance left at all, miraculously. He had only gotten the first set of buttons undone before Blaise removed his hands and turned them back to his own robes, though; it was far more important to get Draco's clothes out of the way than his own. He wanted very much to see him all pale and flushed and sweaty, and most especially disheveled...

Draco twisted away to catch his breath, but only inches continued to separate them. "It's too cold for this..." he panted, though his fingers didn't seem to get the message; they were obediently undoing buttons.

He smiled. "I'll keep you warm."

"Right... _You're_ too cold for that."

"I thought you were going to quit bitching."

"Never..."

Blaise gave a low chuckle and pushed a finger inside him; Draco jumped as though he somehow weren't expecting it, with a expression almost comical enough to make him actually laugh. He kissed him again instead, pulling layers of clothes away and letting his free hand run over his side, idly tracing ribs. He really was getting thin; it was becoming un-sexy.

"Eat more," he suggested in a murmur. Draco made a noise of frustration and reached up to push his head back.

"Just shut up about it and fuck me already..."

At the same time Blaise grinned, he heard a noise behind him, as of a curtain being moved out of the way.

"Mister Zabini!"

Draco made another noise, this time not of frustration; this noise was somewhere within the trinity of surprise, humiliation, and abject terror.

Madam Pomfrey's voice apparently had a special power that made any erection that heard it wither and die; Blaise was in a good position to notice the effect on both of them. He only slid off the bed as though absolutely nothing were amiss, though, looking at her with slightly raised eyebrows as though to ask what the matter could possibly be, while standing in a position to preserve at least a little of Draco's modesty. Meanwhile, Draco had not only pulled his robes firmly back over him, but had dragged a pillow down over his face and was refusing to look at anyone.

"Out." Pomfrey pointed her wand at the door, glaring at Blaise red-faced and fuming; it was nowhere near as attractive on her as it was on Draco. "Go report yourself to Professor Snape."

"Yes ma'am," he said evenly.

"And you." Her ire turned on her patient. "No more visitors. If you're too injured to go to class, you're certainly too injured for _that_."

Draco kept the pillow on his face and didn't answer. She kept the glare on him for a moment, then swept it back to Blaise. "Well? Go!"

He went without another word. He looked back, though, to see that Draco had lifted one end of the pillow and was glaring daggers at him from under it. He only smiled back.

_~end~_


End file.
